Harry Potter and the Legilimens' Tale
by Click-whirr
Summary: Harry discovers that he is a Legilimens pretty early on in his life. Enter the worst seventh birthday of Harry's life and a metamorphmagus friend and you've got the start of a new journey. Note: Outline is planned to eventually take Harry through seventh year.
1. Chapter 1: Auditory Hallucinations

_"Ainsi, lecteur, je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre" -Michel de Montaigne_

* * *

Foreword:

The genre of this tale—humble in origin but perhaps pretentious in writing—is what I hope to be a balanced synthesis of fantasy and science fiction. Indeed, it might even be more accurate to separate this story into three genres: fantasy, science, and fiction. The fantasy will be steeped in the canonical world of Harry Potter; rest assured, magical spells, potions, fantastic beasts, and wandlore will be effective keystones throughout our journey. In regards to the science, I will be pulling the resources of my neuroscience and theoretical physics backgrounds into as much of this story as possible. The fictional aspect—though seemingly redundant—derives not from the importance of defining it as a distinct entity, but rather, to emphasize the science as a standalone piece in itself.

While I would like to confidently state that the science is all true and that you can cite this piece of fiction as you would do a peer reviewed academic journal, it is with a sincere disclaimer that I say that this cannot be the case for my story. In fact, even if I had citations for every sentence and fact presented in this fictional piece of work—which I will provide at times for outstanding experiments and theories—I posit that _nothing _in science is ever really proven. The power of the scientific method is that the method only accepts any finding that has been supported by myriad experiments. Indeed, our theories of gravity, atoms, quantum entanglement and connectomes are both powerful and capricious. In a paradoxical yet strangely reciprocal relationship, these theories are whimsical under the most modicum evidences that would subject them to immediate disposal. Yet due to this extreme prejudice, or rather, extreme objectivity of this selective process, it does stand to reason that every scientific theory currently used has not been _disproven _yet—hence, "powerful."

But alas, in a world where magic is prominent, perhaps we will find the unraveling of certain theories accepted today; it really can't be avoided in a fictitious world like Harry's. But regardless of the fate of Heisenberg, Planck, Schrodinger, Eagleman, and Ramachandran in these deathly hallowed halls of fiction, I ask you to try and adopt this mindset: the only thing more powerful than magic is science, because _anyone_ can do science.

And so, with that overdrawn and maudlin piece said, let us begin Harry Potter and the Legilimens' Tale

Disclaimer: I do not own JK Rowling's seminal work on wizardry and witchcraft; my imagination however, well…

* * *

"_We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination. And we are familiar with the landscapes of our own imagination, our inscapes. We've lived with them all our lives. But there are also hallucinations as well, and hallucinations are completely different. They don't seem to be of our creation and they don't seem to be of our control. They seem to come from the outside and to mimic perception."_

-Oliver Sacks, on Charles Bonnet Syndrome

Chapter 1: Auditory Hallucinations

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

The incessant noise that early July morning saw the fluttering of two bright green eyes. Long since had the noise stopped being an annoyance and instead adopted a sort of rhythmic soothing effect. After six years of hearing the balanced beat every morning, he greeted his alarm clock with a slow swipe that transferred water from his auburn cheek to his palm.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

As he felt himself leaving the mental gravity that usually accompanies the initial stages of wakefulness, he grimaced as he pulled the cord above him to light his living quarters and shifted his head from the path of the falling water. Again he had somehow repositioned his body during sleep so that his head had ended up directly beneath the running path; perhaps he moved frequently in his sleep or even had a case of mild sleepwalking—no, what was it that the book called it? Somnambulism. Of course, when your sleeping space was confined to 4 square feet, it was hard to verify this hypothesis.

Understanding that he had exactly 26 minutes now until the water stopped dripping and Aunt Petunia came down from her shower to unlock his room—otherwise known as a "cupboard" in what most dictionaries considered proper English vernacular—he moved his hand reflexively to his right where he knew his friend in question lie in wait. Pulling a giant encyclopedia titled _Everything You Need to Know About the World Today and More _up to his lap, he made his way over to page 1667 and started reading.

Not being given many toys, actually, any toys at all in his childhood, he had been so pleased to have taken in his bound friend a year ago when Dudley rejected Aunt Marge's gift of golden knowledge in favor of his usual playthings—video games, Harry's torso, video games, Harry's glasses. Apparently she had heard from a cousin of a friend of a friend that all the bright kids read books these days. With their precious son's wont at the apex of importance, the book was discarded and left with the other trash: namely Harry.

At first, he had found the entries in the encyclopedia to be incredibly difficult. Yet Harry had always been an early reader. Even before he had attended primary school, he had understood that those interesting lines stood for words, and that words were power. Realizing that his lack of comprehension was more often than not a question of his limited vocabulary, he had thereby made his second best friend: the oxford dictionary. With both companions, words transformed into stories and facts became experiences. And with the advent of his discovery of the public library near his elementary school, his mind had soared.

Already in his relatively short life of nearly seven years—he would actually be turning seven exactly in fifteen minutes—he had worked as Frank Gehry's contemporary on some architectural projects. He had dived through the water as he took on an assortment of different muscle fibers that allowed him to glide along the coastal region. But his favorite times were when he traveled through space and saw the planets, the asteroid belts, the other stars, the network of galaxies and perhaps bubbles that formed multiple universes that made his cupboard space seem infinitely smaller than he had ever even dared to think… Speaking of networks, he had to admit that his favorite subject in the encyclopedia was the brain. How could anyone not appreciate the fact that everything you were and are is included in a three-pound mass of jelly that can contemplate yourself, the heavens, and contemplate itself contemplating the heavens?

"_Metacognition_," he thought with a smile as he used his newest vocabulary word. Then aloud, "Thinking about thinking." Taking his place on the page he had marked the night before just hours earlier, he began reading about high fructose corn syrup as his eyes lazily scanned the pages; he had already read the encyclopedia completely through several times over. If only the librarians had let him make his own library card. Of course, most of the people there thought he was just being cute when he dove his head into books on general relativity or particle theory. Once, a librarian had even come by telling him that there were no "fun" pictures in the books he had with him, and that he knew of a "magical" place that had a lot of colorful fun books. Not wanting to make trouble, he followed the man to the "magical" place that held two wooden tables and long green cut-outs surrounding them that looked nothing like real leaves. As soon as the man left, he continued on with reading about the proposed applications of the duality of light's nature while sitting next to another child his age who drooled on a book about a giant red dog.

Bringing his mind back to his encyclopedia, he was just about to make his way into the section about semi-conductors when he heard the tell-tale pounding making its way closer to his cupboard. Neatly placing his book behind his back in the corner of the cupboard, he laid down once again after clicking off his light—avoiding the puddle of water that had formed meanwhile—and closed his eyes just as he heard the sounds of the cupboard lock relinquish its vespertine hold. But instead of the usual drawling of his aunt, his eyes suddenly shot open as he heard a voice he did not recognize. It was a voice that sounded so hollow, he couldn't even tell if the person were female or male.

And now, with his eyes open, his mind seemed to freeze as he dumbly stared at the person in front of him. For rather than seeing his aunt, he found himself staring up at a girl-no a teenager-whose clothes looked to be from a medieval fare and hair that…_was changing color?_ But strangest of all, her eyes echoed that hollow voice, buried under a silvery glaze that—for some reason—frightened him more than anything.

"Harry Potter. Come with me." Stretching out her hand with its fingerless gloves, Nymphadora Tonks' face gave no bend to emotion as she firmly grabbed the young boy's wrist and snapped what looked like a snake staff in her other hand. Harry just started to feel his first words come out of his throat as he then felt them suck back into him, with the sensation of his entire body being squeezed and warped through the eye of a needle accompanying it.

ooOoOoo

It was a very agitated Professor McGonagall and a humming Dumbledore that strolled through Wisteria Walk in Little Whinging. Just another corner now, and they would find themselves at a Number 4 Privet Drive. While the pair was quite oddly dressed, a confundus charm had ensured that curious eyes would be led astray. They were here today to check up on a one Harry James Potter and make sure that he was fine, as they always did around the time of his birthday. Dumbledore himself always checked upon the wards every year to ensure that they would keep the boy safe. She had come along this time though, as she was worried for the boy's development. From her memories within Dumbledore's pensieve, she had never seen more pompous and bigoted individuals than the Dursleys.

As the wizened professor continued that nonsensical tune that seemed as random as the wizard himself, she looked around at the white picket houses and struggled to find the words to describe the place. Boring? No, that wasn't quite it. It had everything in line, but it was almost as if everything were too perfect. Not one blade of grass stood above any other in the lawns, and even the little spouts that released water seemed to avoid the pavement they were walking on, as if there were some sort of shield. A brief smile flickered across her face as she thought of her dear friend Pomona using protego on her prized potting sheds. And suddenly, it clicked. The place—this entire little town—was unnaturally ordinary.

"Albus, I must insist my mild annoyance on not being informed of the boy's living condition. Have you checked up on him since the last year's ward checks?"

The wizard slowed his pace as his humming gave way to a soft chuckle. "Minerva, you are much too worried. I am sure young Harry is fine and will grow up to be just like his father." And then, with a small twinkling of his eyes, he asked, "Or is that what you are fearing?"

Minerva turned her head as she walked faster, leaving her response to just that; James Potter had never been a model student, but the headmaster knew that she was worrying about something else entirely. For the past six days, ever since that prophecy had been made, she had not been able to shake a certain feeling. It was almost as if…

Her thoughts were suddenly cut short though as Dumbledore suddenly broke into a sprint that showed a surprising celerity for the man's apparent age. Looking towards his destination, her legs froze for just a fraction of a second before she joined him in his run toward a certain number 4 Privet Drive that had an image of a giant skull with a serpent exiting its mouth. Suddenly, the last words of the prophecy rang clearly in her mind.

"**WHILE ONE LIVES TO KILL, THE OTHER WILL KILL TO LIVE—AND BRING DEATH TO ALL SECRETS AT HOGWARTS"**

ooOoOoo

Harry felt his breathing slowly regain rhythm as he tried to gain his bearings. It was cold and for the second time that morning, the sound of dripping water woke him. Deciding not to play into a cliché and pinch himself, he kept still as he tried to take in more details. Perhaps it was the fault of the books he had read of the dark ages in Europe, but he couldn't help but think the room he now found himself in looked like a dungeon. A lone torch on one of the walls was lighting the entire arena, though just to the point where he could make out outlines and shadows. That was when he noticed the girl who had, well, done whatever she did to take him here. He had certainly heard about teleportation before, but he was pretty sure that the technology to instantaneously transfer molecules across space and time did not exist yet. Despite the dimness of the room though, the girl was clearly visible standing against the far wall, with her eyes still as glazed as a patient with advanced cataracts.

There were no doors, so how did they get here? Who was this girl? What did she want from him? Was he going to be left here to die before he ever got to live past his 7th birthday? How the hell did he get here? _How the hell did he get here?_ Harry's mind raced through so many questions that the pounding in his head soon matched the pounding in his chest. One moment in his cupboard, the next… in a dungeon. He was just about to reach the point where he was willing to sacrifice his pride and pinch himself to humor his struggling reality and also burst into tears when he suddenly heard a voice shout out.

"Help!"

Jumping up from his sitting position, Harry swung his small frame around as he tried to find the source of the voice. He had just made sure that there were only two people in the room, yet where did...

"HELP!" The voice was louder now, and Harry felt his confusion fade to desperation as he wondered what kind of person could make such a horrid cry. "HELP! HELP! HELP!" Like a song stuck on its record, the voice yelled out louder and louder as Harry scanned every brick of the room, careful to avoid the area around his captor. The sound was so clear, but there was no one else in the room. Walking over to the walls closest to the torch, he pressed his ears into them and then to the floor as he tried to pinpoint the source of the sound. Ratiocination took its habit as different ideas flew into his mind. Could it be that he had been caught up in a human trafficking crime like the ones he had heard about on the news on Miss Figg's television? Could it be that he was just one of myriad children taken from their homes, with several other children in blocks adjacent to his? Perhaps his brain, in its marvelous ability to adapt, had blurred the traumatic circumstances of his kidnapping. Actually, he had heard of short-term retrograde amnesia being triggered by extremely traumatic events, but he had never thought that it would occur to him—sort of in that way that no one ever thinks about how the worst could happen to them.

Covering his ears because the noise had become unbearable now, Harry couldn't help but notice that the sound was still getting louder. But all of a sudden, another sound then joined the clamor. A gruff voice: this one was barking orders. Then another voice that squeamishly complained that he didn't want to work joined the fray. And finally, another voice, this one female, swore more colorfully than Dudley had ever unleashed upon the playgrounds of Little Whinging. But the voice crying for help was still going on, and Harry was just about to go crazy from the experience before he finally decided that he had had quite enough for a day, burst into tears as any normal child would do, and fainted on the spot.

Unbeknownst to Harry, if he had seen a clock at the very moment that the voices had started to ring in his mind, he would have seen the long arm hit twelve as he turned exactly seven years old.

ooOoOoo

McGonagall could only stare in horror as she looked upon the scene. It didn't make any sense at all. How could they have gotten in? Who could have possibly released the Dark Mark into the sky—during the day nonetheless! As Dumbledore weaved his magic around the air and dissipated the Dark Mark with some unknown incantation, she raced towards the door and waved her wand, blasting open the front door. With a vigilance that would have had Moody singing praises, she immediately whipped up a shield and watched for any movement in the immediate vicinity. Hearing a familiar sounding crack, she nodded to herself as she knew that the wizard behind her had most likely apparated into the rooms to check for young Harry. What they found instead though made McGonagall almost weak at the knees despite being the head of Gryffindor.

Here were the individuals known formerly as Petunia and Vernon Dursley, stretched into pieces and mangled with body parts separated, so as to spell a message that was somehow even more fearsome than the mutilation.

"Minerva, we must return to Hogwarts immediately. Be it as it may, I fear it is time to revive the Order of the Phoenix." After a slight pause, Dumbledore closed his eyes as his age seemed to suddenly weigh all at once upon his eyelids. "I'm sorry this happened. I will take full responsibility when the time comes, but we must leave. Now." With that, the old wizard vanished at a sound and left McGonagall shaky but cold. A sharp anger started to twist out of her wand as she swore on the spot to take revenge. Against someone. Waving her wand, she took down the bodies from the wall and was relieved to notice that at least the child's body was not present in the mutilation. She would have to send an auror over to check up on the surviving member after she got to the castle. Using her many years of transfiguration skill, she tried her best to mend the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Dursley to presentable order before wiping the blood off the wall, fading the original message But as she finally apparated away and left the ghastly scene, the message was nevertheless clearly apparent:

_I know of the prophecy and will make sure the boy who lived dies_

ooOoOoo

Harry sat with his arms around his knees as he slowly rocked himself back and forth in the corner of the room. He found this repetitive motion, like the undulations of a small boat, strangely comforting. He had once painted the media-represented patients of psychiatric wards as being effusively inaccurate and stereotypical. But as he now took comfort in the very same rhythm, perhaps not all of the media was a lie.

He had been here for several days now. He quickly found out that food would appear when he fell asleep; he had tried to stay up several times before this to see how it was being brought in, but he found that even if he stayed awake the entire night, the food would only appear after he fell asleep. Looking around, he knew that this must mean that there were hidden cameras watching his every move. For some reason, his kidnapper wanted to keep him alive. For what though, he prayed he didn't find out anytime soon.

As for the kidnapper, the older girl had just stood there this entire time. As far as he could tell, she did not eat or sleep; she just stood there, with that same glazed look. Of course, her body was obviously feeling the effects of not eating or resting. Already he could tell that she was far more emaciated than when she had first brought him here; her long oxford robes did nothing to help that, with the yellow and black badge at its front strangely out of place next to her pale face. As far as he could tell, she looked to be at least twice his age, though still probably in secondary school. At first, he was afraid to even approach her. But as his self-diagnosed madness from the voices clawed at him, he began to just ignore her presence and stick to his side of the room. Eventually, when the time came, he was even fine with getting rid of his wastes on the floor, as she didn't seem to be affected by anything he said or did.

Speaking of which, the voices. Sometimes, the voices would fade slightly, while other times, the voices seemed to come at full force. Night was his sanctuary, as if his auditory hallucinations started to get tired of torturing his brain so. But then, he would still be subject to that first tormented voice crying for help; that sound _never_ stopped. He had long since given up looking for the source though.

As he slowly munched on a piece of moldy bread that he had found in the corner of the room, he wondered what was wrong with him. Did he have some sort of glioblastoma? No… a brain tumor would not have had such a sudden onset of symptoms. Perhaps the trauma he experienced from the kidnapping had caused a split from reality. But he remembered reading that most schizophrenic symptoms began at least after adolescence. Also, he was fairly certain that there was a genetic component to schizophrenia that had not been seen in any of his relatives.

Rocking back and forth still, Harry felt his cold hands grip his knees a little harder. What was the point of keeping him here? Ransom? Harry Potter was probably the least important child of all of Little Whinging, his aunt and uncle had been made sure of that. Wistfully, Harry scrunched his lips into a dry smile as he realized that he actually missed his misanthropic aunt and corpulent uncle. Hell, he even missed Dudley and his gang. Did they even miss him? He was almost imagining his aunt opening the cupboard to his room and shrugging in indifference when he forced himself to stop. It was too much to think about. Surprised that he could still cry even after he had thought that he rung his eyes dry from the first few days he had stayed here, he wondered if his aunt Petunia missed him.

"_Harry?"_

Harry suddenly bolted upright as his nascent tears threatened to spill back into his eyes from the movement. Had he just imagined it or-

"_Harry?" _

Suddenly, Harry realized that he was no longer hearing the cries for help. Rather, the voice had changed to a weak, soft tone that whispered a name he had never thought he'd hear again. Daring to speak, his voice came out choked as he used his voice for the first time in days.

"Yes?" It was barely audible, and he was determined to try again. "Hello? I'm Harry. Where are you?"

"_Harry?"_

Any rise in optimism suddenly plummeted into cynicism as he suddenly realized that his brain had now decided to torment him in a different way. Rather than crying for help, the voices were now calling his name. But even as he started to accept his delusional state, he couldn't help but feel as if something were different. Maybe he was starting to accept a new reality, one where schizophrenics lived in complete normalcy. But even then, it was still something that he couldn't exactly put his finger on. It was as if the voice… Eyes widening, he swiveled towards the still standing girl. Having already stared into the abyss of psychosis, he decided to take the plunge. Taking a deep breath, he steadily aimed his voice at his captor and decided to lead his own descent into madness.

With a solid voice that surprised him, he asked with his flashing green eyes piercing her own gray orbs; "Have you been the one calling me? For help?"

A silence suddenly came over the dark room as Harry's heart raced. This respite had never occurred since he had first heard the voices. Had he finally vanquished his auditory hallucinations? By targeting his psychosis at his captor and confronting her, had he managed some strange Freudian strategy that actually absolved him of his mental affliction—despite never having seen any empirical evidence suggesting this could happen in any of the books he had read on psychoanalysis?

And then it came. A result that confounded him even more than any psychotic break or theory he had previously thought possible before and during his tenure as a prisoner.

Seeming to come straight from the older girl with glazed eyes, a voice that was clearly directed at him rang that night without any vocal cords vibrating.

"_Oh shit. You CAN hear me."_

-To be continued-

A/N: And with such macabre origins, that was the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Legilimens' Tale. Rest assured, the second chapter will be quite interesting now that Harry and Tonks can communicate with each other.

As an author who writes for not only his own pleasure but for his readers, I do hope you'll review this chapter. I ask this not only for affirmation—though I welcome praises with a glowing heart—but also for constructive feedback. I currently do not have an editor, so if you're up for reading through around 4000-7000 words for each chapter to check for redundancies, mechanical errors, and plot-holes, I welcome you with open arms.

There wasn't a lot of science in this chapter, but as soon as Harry starts to develop as a Legilimens, we'll begin to see much of the brain's (and quantum mechanics') mysteries unfold. So, please review below and subscribe to my story!


	2. Chapter 2: Emergent Properties

A/N: A certain thoughtful reviewer mentioned something a little confusion from the last chapter. Yes, Harry did wake up in the morning as Petunia took a shower—poor woman had no idea what would await her later that morning—and about fifteen minutes later, it was his birthday. Unless you thought that a temporal flux occurred or the rotational velocity of the earth suddenly increased to shorten the day to said period of time, I can gather how it might have been confusing since most stories function under the premise that birthdays beginning on midnight. In my defense, for too long has the lore of temporally-linked events, such as Harry getting jedi powers or talking with Merlin about some long lost power, been plagued by what I dub the time-zone fallacy. For example, if Harry is supposed to receive a power on the midnight of his birthday, what is there to say that he doesn't receive the power nearly 3 hours earlier when it's midnight in another country? As the calendar is a man-made convenience, I instead follow the biological clock that exists within us. As such, while Harry's birth date may be July 31, his birth _time_ in my story is 7:05AM, making the fifteen minutes following the start of the last chapter the most accurate time for his 7th birthday (even so, our current calendar is not perfect in regards to keeping track of the days since the average day doesn't come out to exactly 24.00000000… hours).

Then again, I could have always invented overreaching explanation about how the lunar placement and exact position of the planets on the midnight of his seventh birthday may have been the key factor, but perhaps we should just agree that anything is possible with magic and my fight to use science to explain magical phenomena may just fall short sometimes. But I digress from your original intent in opening this chapter of hoped delights. As my main occupation is that of a teacher though, I do have some questions to start guiding your thoughts in regards to this story:

1. At this point, Tonks should only be about fourteen, or in her fourth year of Hogwarts. As students are not allowed to use their wands outside of Hogwarts until they are seventeen, was she alone in her infiltration?

2. The purpose of the wards was to keep Harry safe… how in the world did Tonks get into the home in the first place?

3. Where's little Dudley? Why wasn't he killed? How do you think he is going to react to his parents' death?

4. Why are they bothering to keep Harry alive—though just barely? Why not just try to kill him? (Think about the writing on the wall)

5. How has Tonks been able to not suffer from venous edema (swelling of the veins due to her centurion position) from standing so long? Also, doesn't she need to use the bathroom?

Also, I would like to provide another disclaimer that while you may start to think Harry is "overpowered" due to his knowledge and legilimency, the main antagonist of the series will also have a significant advantage to balance out the story. After all, the conflict is what drives the story.

Finally, I would like to give a big thanks to my beta reader, who truly made this chapter shine from its rougher beginnings. The Forrester to my story, I did not know the value of having an editor until now.

In the future, I will try to keep author notes concise to take as little as possible away from the actual story. While I hope the last chapter caught your attention, my intention for this following piece is to keep it.

* * *

Disclaimer: Divide JK Rowling by zero and Harry will sing (Translated: I don't own Harry Potter so don't sue me).

"_The whole is more than the sum of its parts."_

_-Aristotle_

Chapter 2: Emergent Properties

_And then it came. A result that confounded him more than any psychotic break or previously considered bamboozling theory. _

_A voice seemed to come from the girl with glazed eyes, her words clearly directed at him, without any vocal cords appearing to vibrate._

"_Oh shit. You CAN hear me." _

ooOoOoo

Harry froze as he assessed his current situation. He was seven years old. _Check._ He had been kidnapped from Privet Drive and thrown into a dark chamber. _Check._ Whoever his captors were, they wanted him alive. _Check_. He had experienced some sort of psychotic break and was hearing voices in his head…

It was this last thought that had him struggling to reconcile what had just happened with what he had been thinking for days. He had thought that he was—for lack of a better term—absolutely insane. While the term was originally developed as a precisely legal term, _insanity_ was so pervasive in media vernacular that most just took it to mean "crazy." Hearing voices day in and out seemed to do that to you though, regardless of any prior knowledge of legal jargon.

Returning his attention to the current quandary, he didn't even get the chance to voice another question when that same voice rang through his head.

_"Just checking—you CAN hear me, yeah?"_

Heart pounding, Harry was about to speak when he remembered that there might have been hidden cameras. Deciding that he might as well assume a diving position now that he had already fallen into this ridiculous game, he tried to quiet the voices that were creeping in from outside and focus on the older girl in front of him; ironically, it was the same voice he had been trying to shut out for days. _"I can hear you."_ Pause._ "Can you hear me?"_

Harry was met with silence. He took a breath to try again when he heard something strange. It was muffled— but so familiar … Oh, it was the sound of crying.

ooOoOoo

Nymphadora Tonks had always considered herself somewhat of a lone wolf. She never quite got along with her fellow witches and wizards—although in their defense, she had never _really_ made a concerted effort to do so. Sure, she would play the occasional prank that several professors had deemed as a cry for attention, but she genuinely just never cared for the attention and company of witches that constantly gossiped and clamored about boys like Charlie Weasley. And it was this very isolation that brought her to an abandoned store in a dark area of Hogsmeade. It was her isolation that had led to an _imperio_ curse, and then the unwilling kidnapping of a boy no older than seven or eight from a cupboard. And it was that same curse that saw them banished them to what she was beginning to believe was _true isolation. _Who cast the curse? They had been careful to keep themselves hidden, not that it particularly mattered. She was stuck here, and she knew it.

The only thing that made her situation worse was seeing this boy lose his grip on reality. While the _imperio _curse kept her body possessed, her mind was free to see and feel—and her heart broke for him. She watched him muttering, crying, screaming, and then collapse as his once brightly shining green eyes retreated to sordid shadows sunk in a pallid face.

But now the boy was talking to her, and both anguish and relief combined as she felt—for the first time since she had been cursed—human. And so, the metaphorical tears in her mind's eye fell, drop after drop, as she sobbed for both herself and the boy.

Said boy listened quietly before he carefully arranged his next words. _"Are you okay?" _He had once read from a child psychology book that rather than demanding answers, it was often more effective to ask questions regarding general welfare first; it opened up an initial bridge of trust, rather than hostility. While he was sure that this girl was not his enemy, he was still not sure if she could be his friend.

Tonks' sobs fizzled as her voice came back, a little clearer. "_I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for all this. Harry, right?"_

"_Yeah, it's Harry."_ Then hesitatingly,_ "What's your name?" _

_ "It's Nymphadora, but I prefer Tonks. I hate the name my mother used for me."_

Harry could have sworn he felt the slightest of grins at that last statement. Breathing steadily, never mind the fact that he was now engaged in acts of telepathic communication, he decided it was time to get some answers. _"Nice to meet you Tonks—well, nice under the circumstances. Could you explain how we got here and what's going on?" _Harry had to resist the urge to shout these last few words. He was finally so close to some sort of answer and he decided that _nothing_ would surprise him anymore—not even if he found out that humans had suddenly evolved ESP, could teleport and read minds. Currently, this was his running theory. However, he had to admit that it was still pretty eerie to speak with someone whose eyes were as glazed as the mildew sprawled across his Aunt Petunia's prized plants.

Tonks took a deep, albeit, mental breath. This would be a long story. _"Well, I guess we should start from the beginning. I'm a witch, meaning I can do magic. I attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Oh, and I guess you're a wizard too, but I'm pretty sure you knew that."_

_ "...I'm a what?"_

ooOoOoo

McGonagall sped past the portraits in the hallways and several students' quizzical looks. It was not the time to answer questions though. She had a meeting, one that could possibly decide the fate of the wizarding world. As a white gargoyle settled into her sights, she briskly yelled "Chocolover!" just in time for the gargoyle to swing out of her way and reveal a staircase leading up to the headmaster's chamber. The door swung open to friends, colleagues, and—her eyes widened—Lucius Malfoy? What had happened before she had arrived?

Just then, Dumbledore clapped his hands as he stood up from his desk. "Well, now that we're all here, shall we proceed to the Wizengamot chamber to discuss the current state of affairs?"

ooOoOoo

_"Are you okay Harry? Sorry, that was probably a lot to hear at once."_

His head was reeling. The world spun as he tried to summarize what he had just heard. So, he was a wizard. And there was a sizable population of magical folk living within Britain—in fact, all around the world. His parents had been a part of this magical world before they were murdered by… scrunching his nose, he realized that she had never really given him a name. The night of his parents' murder had resulted in instant celebrity status as the supposed "Boy Who Lived," as it made him the first wizard in existence to have survived the killing curse. The rest however, while still surprising, no longer shocked him. Tonks was just an unsuspecting student at this magic school and had been forced to kidnap him during a trip to Pigsmeat—no, Hogsmeat?

Hogwarts, Hogsmeat. Hogs. Harry shook his head as he wondered why there was such a strange obsession with pigs.

Allowing himself the faintest of smiles, he looked at Tonks as he finally replied._ "Thanks, that really clarified a lot of things. It does sound unbelievable, but I guess I can't really doubt anything now that I've had a full conversation with someone inside my own mind. Though maybe I'm just crazy, and I've just made up this entire conversation in my head—" _He felt Tonks about to raise her voice in protest when he quickly added, "_but I'm more sure than not that everything that has happened is real, or at least, is my current reality. After all, Richard Feynman once said that the final say in truth is observation."_

_ "Richard Feynman?"_

Harry smiled good naturedly as he replied, _"Er, a really smart guy—I mean muggle—that I admire." _

While today had been a most emotional and dare she say it—progressive—day, Tonks couldn't help but be surprised by how precocious this young boy had been throughout this entire experience. He had digested the information and asked critical questions, even his new vocabulary was in play seconds after he had heard them. Were all muggle children this clever? Or was it a property of being the boy who lived? There was a tinge of the unnatural to the boy's wisdom, as if he had traveled back in time from an older age and was an adult in a younger boy's body. But that was_ impossible. _

The young boy in question laughed as he sat down on the floor. _"Rest assured, I'm not a time traveler." _

Tonks suddenly felt a flush as she realized that she couldn't hide any thoughts from him now. Sensing her embarrassment, Harry continued. "_I just really like to read. I guess you could say that I've lived thousands of lives—well, in the form of stories though." _Almost offhandedly, he added, "_If we ever get out of this situation, I'll lend you some of my favorites."_

Harry looked contemplative for a while before grinning widely. "_You know, I think I have even more questions now that I've got some answers, mostly about magic though. Oh, where to start… First off, how does magic even happen? Are there observable movements of particles, electrons, and the like whenever magic occurs? Are classical laws—scratch that—even quantum laws of physics even remotely considerate of magical properties? Like, can you make matter from nothing? Or, say, go faster than the speed of light?"_

Tonks could only reply that she didn't know the answer to these questions and had never really thought about them, before the boy's musings swept forward unabated. Though they were aimed more to himself than as fodder for conversation, Tonks didn't mind listening to his alien phrases and questions. There was something soothing about witnessing the boy's mind work, like clockwork: reassuring, reliable, with distinctly forward in motion.

"_And now, all this telepathy business is making me think that maybe the origin of magic is in the brain. From what you've told me, it doesn't sound too out of place to say that imagination is a big component of magic. And imagination is from the brain, so it makes sense that there's a part of the brain where magic originates."_

Thinking back to his many books and encyclopedias, he mentally read through their pages as he recalled the historical account of Phineas Gage. The idea that different parts of the brain do different things was a pretty common one these days, but even two hundred years ago, it was not such an obvious truth. One of the first stories that spoke to this fact came from the mid-1800s: a certain Phineas Gage. As a railroad foreman, an unfortunate encounter with dynamite found a metal pole 3.2 cm in diameter shooting through his cheek, the top of the head, and ultimately out the left foremost part of the brain (the left frontal lobe)—Harry remembered wincing as he read that bit. Despite the injury though, Gage lived through the experience, a verifiable medical miracle. However, what was still more fascinating, at least in his opinion, were the reports that began to creep in from Gage's friends, family, and colleagues: Gage was "no longer Gage." Originally amicable and agreeable, his friends and family saw a reckless and agitated man after the accident, plummeting into gambling debts.

While the veracity of these reports had been re-examined in recent years, the case of Phineas Gage ushered in an idea that formed a modern cornerstone of neuroscientific thought: certain aspects of human behavior can be traced to certain parts of the brain, like the frontal lobe for personality. Since then, more parts of the brain have been assigned specific roles; for instance, Harry had read recently that scientists now knew that the frontotemporal region of the brain has important roles in the ability to control hidden impulses. Damage, or a lesion, to this location, created pathological gamblers who racked up thousands of dollars of debt with frightening efficiency.

Given all this, could there be an area in the brain responsible for magic, and in this case, telepathy? Despite the logic of it, Harry knew it was unlikely. MRI and fMRI machines that could image live brains would have picked up such a massive anomaly in brain structure by now. Perhaps magic was even caused by a tumorous structure, an abnormality meant for excision. Though this idea most likely owed its genesis to his earlier amateur diagnosis of glioblastoma.

Harry's mind was whirring. There was another hypothesis though, one that was much more complex than simply assigning a particular brain structure to the job of conducing magic. Like memory, perhaps magic had its echo across the entire brain. Could it be that the pathways of neurons, when run in a very particular circuit, resulted in magic formation? If that were the case though, why didn't everyone have magic? Perhaps these magical circuits were not intuitive, or a gene resulted in certain crossings and connections between neurons and glial cells that normally would not be achieved in non-magical humans_. _Either way, if this hypothesis were correct, then that would mean that magic was an _emergent propert_y—a phenomena that was greater than the individual neurons that allowed its existence. Just as you wouldn't get an Einstein if you piled his 75 trillion cells on top of each other, it was very possible that only through the entirety of all the connections in the brain could magic emerge.

The very notion of having potentially discovered something so amazing pushed Harry to the brim with excitement. A whole new world had opened up for him—magical emergent properties! How could the hospitals or labs of Britain's magical society not have taken advantage of such a rich field? If Tonks, and she seemed quite intelligent for her age, was clueless about such magic theory, then the outlook of scientific progress for magical Britain was quite dim indeed. Was it an issue of government funding? If the so-called Ministry of Magic was organized enough to keep tabs on underage wizards—

Harry froze as his mind suddenly came up with an answer that had been there all along. What had he been thinking—or rather, what had he not been thinking? Breaking out of his thoughts, he turned his sight to Tonks as he quietly thought out to her.

"_Tonks, I think I might have figured out a way out of here…"_

If she had been capable of it, her eyes would have widened as she realized that she had not even thought about escaping this entire time. She had just been so happy this past hour to just listen to the boy think, and here was this boy—at least seven years her junior—thinking of an escape plan. Harry Potter: he was much more impressive than even _Hogwarts: A History_ made him out to be. But what was his plan?

Walking closer to her, Harry blinked a couple of times in a failed attempt to wink and smiled. "_This ministry of magic… so they respond to ANY type of underage magic, right?"_

Immediately, Tonks realized what he was getting at. While she was useless in this state, the idiot that had cursed her hadn't even touched her wand. _"Left breast pocket, underneath the robes." _

Moving unabashedly forward as only a seven-year would do, Harry quickly reached into her robes as he removed her brown wand of unicorn core, while Tonks was glad that her face couldn't blush at the boy's insensitive movement. I mean, he was just a kid but still…

Realizing that time was of the essence if there were indeed cameras around them, Harry quickly swished the wand around as he yelled at her aloud. "Quick! What's a spell?"

For some reason, the only spell that came into her head was one of the hardest ones she knew, yet she yelled it anyway. _"Try Expecto Patronum!"_

Even as he yelled the words, Tonks cursed herself as she realized that it was a horrible spell to try at first hand. Consequently, nothing—not even little sparkles—appeared from her wand in Harry's hand.

Looking agitated after probing her mind, Harry quickly asked again. "Thanks for giving me the hardest spell you know. Is there another one that I might be able to use?"

Realizing that the stinging hex _scorpius_ was one of the easier wand movements, she was about to tell him the wand movements when he started to do them on his own. Needless to say, she was surprised. She already knew he could read her thoughts, but did he also have free access to her visual ones? Before, she had started to suspect something was special about Harry when he had been able to read her mind, but to do so on this level was far beyond any legilimency she had ever heard of. But she had no time to be impressed as he finished his wand movements as precisely as she would have done them and yelled "_SCORPIO!" _This time, a thin beam of blue light exited the tip of her wand as it flew straight and blasted a small few pieces of stone from the wall.

"Alright!" Cheering, Harry quickly stored this new spell into his long-term memory as he tucked away the exhilaration of actually doing magic for some other, more opportune time. Any moment now, one of two things would happen: either the ministry officials would come and rescue them, having responded to the use of underage magic, or their captors would appear first and kill them without a second thought. Either way, something was finally going to happen in this cage of dearth.

But after several minutes of no activity, their adrenaline began to fade as they waited for an arrival—any arrival. Still, they held onto their hope as Harry tried firing a couple more stinging hexes at the walls. After a couple hours though, they had finally realized the cold, hard truth: no one was coming—neither captor or savior. The only thing that had changed was that Harry was now able to shoot beams of light at walls, Tonks was as immobilized as the last command under the _imperio_ curse had left her, and Harry was still a boy who could hear voices. They were alone, just the two of them, and they would probably die here together.

ooOoOoo

Tonks tried not to let disappointment leak into her thoughts as she put forth her best attempt at cheering up the young boy by mitigating their failure. A criminal mastermind who could kidnap Harry underneath Dumbledore's proverbial nose must have been prepared for such an incident. But really, deep down inside, she knew that she couldn't keep her disappointment from him. It was probably her very depression that was weighing him down even further.

Meanwhile, Harry walked around the room as he kicked aside several pieces of rubble he had blasted earlier with the wand. There was nothing to be done now. Kicking one of the larger pieces, he tried to match its uneven roll with the voices that were coming from outside. He now understood these to be voices from the area outside of the cage. Sometimes, he tried listening to the voices to pick up some clues. But the voices must have been far away, since he usually only caught useless snippets of conversation_—_like the static he often heard when Dudley played with the television antennae. With another well-placed kick, the stone piece tumbled over to Tonks, just as he felt her thoughts enter his mind.

_ "Harry… what exactly are you kicking?"_

The boy paused as he was about to answer and slowly nodded his head. It was a strange thing to instantly become aware of what she thought. "Am I thinking what you're thinking, Tonks?" Wincing, he quickly added. "Sorry, I know that I am."

Dismissing his unintentional intrusion—she was almost completely used to it by now in any case—she continued without skipping a beat. _"We'll need some time to prepare just in case there are people waiting for us on the other side of the wall—the unfriendly sorts I mean."_

Harry nodded as he agreed. "Okay. But first thing's first. Actually, we should have just done this from the start instead of attempting the stinging hex. How do we cancel this _imperio _curse?"

Tonks felt her mind start to jump around everything she knew about the unforgiveable curses. Could a seven year old who had never used a wand before today learn to cast one of the most complicated spells they taught in third year? Then again, he had pretty much blown through the beginner spell _scorpio_ on his first try; perhaps her wand was well adapted to his touch. Adding his apparent genius into the equation, it was just possible that this might work. Daring to hope once again, she solemnly replied. _"There's only one spell that would take apart an imperio curse this powerful. It's called finite incantetum, and it's one of the hardest spells I learned in Defense Against the Dark Arts. While you don't need a lot of magic for it, it has a specific counter movement for every spell. Usually, the more advanced the spell, the more difficult the wand work." _

Unperturbed by her disclaimer, Harry grinned as he replied with a jest that was more characteristic of his pre-captivity days. _"Well Miss Tonks, I sure hope you paid attention in class when you learned this Defense Against the Dark Arts magic business."_

As difficult as the current situation was, Tonks couldn't help but reply with matching spirit. "_Top of my class, all three years. Just tell me when and let's get me out of this shell. I swear I've been holding my poop for days."_

ooOoOoo

It was a very focused Harry that probed Tonks' mind, gathering necessary pointers and the like whenever she could offer it. She had been correct; the finite incantatum for this particular _imperio _curse was quite difficult. The base movement itself included eight very tiny movements of the wrist. While it was hard enough to make each movement perfect, the strength of the caster's curse required him to repeat the sequence over eleven times to override the curse's strength; they had figured this out by trial and error mostly, as their tenth repetition had seen the gray in her eyes smolder for a few seconds before returning again.

On another note though, it was curious to him that repeating the sequence of wand movements before incanting the spell had an amplifying effect. When he had time, he would have to see if the same rule applied to the stinging hex. Perhaps the use of an accelerometer would aid in establishing whether repetitive movements had a direct or exponential amplification effect.

But alas, it was during these times when his mind wandered that Tonks had to reprimand him and tell him to redo the sequences. Offering an outside perspective, Tonks was invaluable as she could tell him exactly what he did wrong, right when he did it. But after about six times at attempting the sequence, their excitement grew paramount as he flew through the last four movements of their eighteenth sequence.

Almost bellowing, Harry lifted his wand. "_FINITE INCANTETUM!"_

ooOoOo

It was a very imposing Dumbledore sporting a regal purple robe with stars and moons swirling around in place that stood within the Wizengamot hall that day. These hallowed halls had been constructed almost entirely from druid stones cast from the Morganic era, when precious jewels had been used as magic conductors instead of wands. When the druid stones started to disappear in the mid-Lycanian period three hundred years ago, the chief warlock of that day gathered all the stones and forged them into the chamber that stood here today. It was here that magic was all around them—amplified and omnipresent. In these halls, everyone was humbled by the power of magic and, more importantly, reminded that there were laws in magic greater than any one man.

But in a crowd of already incredible wizards and witches, a certain Chief Warlock confidently stood his ground as he addressed the council above him as if he were speaking to the youngest of students from his beloved school.

"As Chief Warlock, I have called this meeting today regarding three matters. While the first two are of the upmost importance, the third is trifling in comparison, and so can wait until we have discussed the first two in detail."

The members of the Wizengamot muttered amongst themselves as they always did, wondering what ridiculous upset Dumbledore would provide for them this time. The last time he had addressed the council, it was a time of war and darkness with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the height of his power.

Blue eyes piercing every individual all at once, the wizened wizard's voice turned grave as he began. "A few days ago, while our deputy headmistress Professor McGonagall and I were checking on the wards of Harry James Potter's home, we came across this scene." Flicking with his wand, pictures of the Death Eater mark and the corpses of Harry's relatives projected in the air. Stifled gasps and muffled screams sounded as he recounted the bloody details, with the clamor exploding when he explained that they had not found a trace of the boy after searching for several days.

While the chamber went wild with this revelation, Minerva's forehead creased as she wondered why Albus had omitted the message that was written on the wall regarding the prophecy. But she would trust him for now. However, that didn't mean she wasn't going to corner him in his office later and demand an explanation.

Using a sonorus charm to amplify his voice, Dumbledore rose above the noise as he continued. "My second piece of news is also a heavy blow. For the first time in almost fifty years, a Hogwarts student has gone missing and is now presumed dead. Nymphadora Tonks, daughter of Andromeda Tonks, was reported missing as of Sunday. After a very thorough search, we found traces of Dark Magic around the area she was last seen. Indeed, our instruments are picking up the markings of an Unforgiveable Curse."

The hall was in a frenzy now. What was happening to the peace they had worked so hard to win back from you-know-who's followers if one of their own from Hogwarts could be swept away so easily?

Sighing, Dumbledore removed his half-moon spectacles, looking—for once—as old as he was. "I am truly sorry for these incidences, as they both happened under my tenure. I will, of course, accept any edict the council sees fit. But I do wish to contact Ms. Tonks's family personally and offer my deepest condolences."

A silence crept across the room as they felt the headmaster's pain. After the silence bore out, an unspoken tribute to these recent losses, the head auror, Amelia Bones, spoke up as she reminded the council.

"You mentioned one more thing you came here to say, Albus." She said the last word just a little too harshly, as she couldn't help but think of her own niece that was just barely seven.

Eyes searching the crowd, Dumbledore smiled mildly as he replied. "Ah yes, I forgot about that detail. It was simply that I am resigning as Chief Warlock and that I am recommending councilmember Lucius Malfoy to take my place."

A cold silence spread across the chamber as eyes widened and jaws slacked. It was Minerva who finally threw out her voice and shouted what everyone else was thinking.

"WHAT?"

ooOoOoo

Harry watched anxiously as the cloudy wisps slowly faded and the older girl's cheeks regained color. Her hair was warmed to a darker brown as her arms and legs began to tremble. Knowing that she was about to fall, he moved to catch her, though he ended up serving as nothing more than a body cushion as she collapsed on top of him and knocked both of them to the floor. It took a moment for Harry to realize that she was both crying and laughing at the same time, and a bewildered Harry could think of nothing except the joy that was radiating into his mind from the girl.

There were no words Tonks could use to describe her feelings as she finally felt in control of her body once again. It was only after she regained the sensation of her arms, legs, face, and all ten toes that she realized how traumatic the spell had been for her. Too tired to stand back up though, she settled for rolling off the poor boy she had crushed and lay flat on her back.

"Thanks Harry, my own little hero." The voice came out choked and awkward, but Harry could immediately tell that it would end up sounding quite pleasant after she regained proper use of her larynx.

Also tired from casting the intricate spell, Harry gladly rested his head against the smooth rock as he shook his head. "Don't worry about it. If we're going to bust out of this place and plow through any enemies that might be waiting outside, we're going to need all the firepower we can get." Then with a smile, he indicated at the waste that had accumulated in the corner of the room. "But maybe we should start with a spell that cleans up my bathroom business."

Tonks laughed as she weakly raised her wand arm and shrugged the waste away into a patch of soil, which immediately sprouted a lily. "Told you I was good. Speaking of which, I need to get rid of my own business when I can find the energy to get up. Don't you dare look though..." Harry and Tonks burst out laughing as they both felt something that they had not felt in years. Something different, something…warm. They had been so alone their whole lives—Harry in his cupboard and Tonks without any friends in a school as big as Hogwarts. Words unspoken, Harry and Tonks didn't need to read each other minds to know that they were thankful for the company. After all, there were few things in the world that could bring two people closer together than being abducted, subjected to soul-bearing isolation, and reading each other's minds. It was just one of those things that made other stuff seem moot—even going to the bathroom.

And so it came to pass that the two began their new mission. Pushing the boundaries of magic with experimentation and biding their time as they built their strength, they waited patiently for the day that they would break out of this supposed prison and serve revenge to whoever had dared to mess with them.

**-10 MONTHS LATER-**

Seven streaks of gold zipped around faster than a snitch as shadows danced through the small space. Bouncing against the walls, the floor and the ceiling, the random firing patterns of the spells would have easily hit even the most trained Quidditch athlete and probably would have taken down quite a few of the newer aurors of the ministry. But then again, these were no normal individuals.

Dodging the beams that promised a good deal of pain upon contact, Tonks felt little beads of sweat build as she added another two streaks of light into the fray, turning their dungeon into a brightly burning space. Today they would finally beat their record and last a full hour in reflex/evasive training. Looking over at Harry, she was almost jealous as she noticed how easily he was dodging each beam.

Harry had become amazingly adept at using his legilimency to not only use his own field of vision to see around him, but also Tonks'. By now, it was second nature for him to use two different perspectives at all times. Adding that to his naturally quick reflexes, a spell had rarely hit him once he began using his legilimency intentionally. He was also at the stage where he could search further with his ability, probe the minds of people outside of their prison, and see from their perspectives. From this new finding, they had learned that they were inside a castle in Hull that was routinely watched by at least one wizard. Around fifteen miles due west, a construction company was building a new mall.

Adding the final spell into the mix, the pair quickly went into step as they moved left, right, left, left, up, down, spin, down, up one more time, and finally—"There! One hour! I told you we were ready!"

Harry nodded in agreement as he swiped Tonks' wand from her hand in mid-step and transferred the reflective barrier from the walls of the room to them. Now encased in a protective shell several times stronger than the average _protego_, the two stood still as the ten streaks of golden light bounced off of their shield and collided into the now unprotected walls, taking down sizeable pieces of stone from it. Having finished their last piece of training, Harry handed the wand back to Tonks as he stepped back.

_"Are you finally ready to get out of this place?" _He thought to her as she raised her wand to eye level.

Tonks smirked, as she didn't bother replying. _"You already know what I'm going to say anyway." _

And with that, Harry searched with his mind as he felt their guard start nodding off into sleep, meaning that as far as he could tell, there were no people in their immediate vicinity. _"Do it now!"_

Mustering the full force of her not inconsiderable magical reservoir, she ran through the motions for one of her favorite spells exactly twenty-six times before yelling out, _**"REDUCTO!"**_

-To be continued-

A/N: Whew, that was a long one. Please review!


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